Isiah 1:17-
Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow.

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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Your second amendment rights matter

Well the title of this post was taken from a post over at Wolf Files. He linked to a Sun-Times article about the wave of gun violence over the past weekend:

Ten people were killed and at least 44 others were shot across the
city Friday night into early Monday, including a baby girl who suffered
a graze wound to the neck when gunfire erupted at a Near West Side
barbecue.

The latest victims were found naked, shot to death and
lying face down on railroad property near West 91st Street and South
Holland Road on the South Side about 8:50 a.m Monday, according to a
Calumet Area sergeant. Both were shot at some point Sunday night.

The victims, black males believed to be between 16 and 20, remained unidentified as of late Monday afternoon.

Then it goes on and on about other incidents around the city over the past weekend. I'll let you read the rest.

BTW, Wolf Files quotes Glenn Reynolds who also linked to that very story,

So how's that Chicago gun-control law working out?

I know people will be like WTF??? at that quote especially if there are many who believe that guns are the problem. People like Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington who advocates for the city to continue their efforts at gun control:

There are too many guns -- in the wrong hands.

If the city's gun ban goes down, Chicagoans will be able to keep
guns in the home, presumably for self-protection. Those weapons can
also be grabbed by angry young men like Valencia's alleged killer.

Women are at much higher risk of violence from male intimates than
from strangers, and a gun in the home heightens the risk that a woman
will be killed, according to a 2003 study in the American Journal of
Public Health.

A 1998 study published by the Journal of Trauma found that guns in
the home were four times more likely to be used in accidents than to
injure or kill in self-defense. Guns were seven times as likely to be
used in criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 times more likely to
lead to attempted or completed suicides.

In Illinois, firearm-related suicides jumped from 372 in 2006 to 423
incidents in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.

This cannot be the end of gun control. The Daley administration must
go into overdrive and find new strategies to tighten city laws
regulating gun access.

Finally I posted about this Clout City post over at my other blog, The Sixth Ward.
City officials continue to show no interest in examining the effectiveness of gun restrictions, their leading strategy in fighting violence.

The latest example came Friday morning, when the City Council’s
police and fire committee held a rally for the city’s handgun ban—and
Mayor Daley’s still-unfolding plans for curtailing access to firearms in the likely event that the ban is overturned by the Supreme Court.

Of course, that wasn’t the stated purpose of the event in council
chambers. Officially the committee met for a hastily called “hearing to
discuss violence and fire arm registration regulation.”

But from its opening moments, the hearing became a platform for city
officials, gun control advocates, and community activists to argue that
the city needs to continue to find ways to keep Chicagoans from legally
acquiring guns. In nearly two hours of testimony, not one witness
raised questions about the utility of the gun ban or other gun
restrictions, nor did anyone discuss other potential causes of
violence—even though Chicago averages several shootings a day even with the ban in place.

Police
committee chairman Anthony Beale, alderman of the Ninth Ward, said
there was no need to hear from opponents of the ban, or even skeptics.
“I think anybody who’s fighting common-sense gun legislation will be
considered the bad guy,” he said. “We’re trying to make our streets
safer.”

Looks like in Chicago, the effort will continue to be at gun control with no interest in re-examining the ban on handguns for law-abiding citizens.